Laughing softly, he wiped her tears away with his thumbs. ‘I had some change left over...it was that or blow it all in a high-stakes poker game—’
‘Change from what?’ She looked up at him in confusion.
He hesitated, and she felt the muscles in his arms tighten.
‘I sold the Dolce.’
She gaped at him. ‘You sold it? But why?’
‘I needed the money to buy the business back. It was that or go to Ciro.’ He grimaced. ‘So, as I say, I needed the money.’
‘But you love the Dolce.’
‘I did—I do. And I’ve kept a stake in it. But I don’t need it any more.’
His gaze rested on her face, and his love was there for anyone to see.
‘You’re the sweetness in my life, cara.’ His eyes dropped to the ring sparkling on her finger. ‘Now and for eternity.’
EPILOGUE
IT WAS A hot day in late September—one of the hottest on record, according to Manfredi, the Trapani estate’s longest-serving member of staff. But the weather was the last thing on Imma’s mind as she walked slowly through the olive trees.
She had spoken to Claudia that morning, and her sister’s news had pushed every other thought out of her head.
Almost every other thought.
But right now that would have to wait.
Breathing in the scent of warm earth and grass, she replayed her conversation with Claudia.
Claudia and Ciro were together. They were in love. Both of them this time.
It was a lot to take in—too much for one person on her own.
A tremble of happiness ran over her skin.
But she wasn’t on her own any more.
Her eyes fixed on the group of men standing beneath the trees at the other side of the olive grove. Or rather on one particular man.
Vicè was gesticulating energetically, his dark eyes moving over the other men’s faces as he spoke, and she felt a sharp, almost unbearable urge to push them all aside and drag him back to the villa and upstairs to their bedroom.
‘Imma!’
She looked up at the sound of his voice, her heart leaping as it still did, maybe three, five, sometimes ten times a day, whenever she remembered that Vicè was her husband ‘for real’ and ‘forever’.
Pulse jumping, she watched him excuse himself, and then he was walking towards her, his long legs making short work of the uneven ground and a slow, curling smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
She felt her stomach flutter. She had thought that he couldn’t look any more desirable than he did in a suit, but she’d been wrong. In scuffed work boots, faded chinos, and with the sleeves of his denim shirt rolled up he looked impossibly sexy.
‘Signora Trapani...’
He pulled her against him, his mouth seeking hers with an urgency that made her whole body twitch with desire.
Behind them, a cacophony of approving whistles and shouts filled the air.
‘Vicè, everyone is watching us,’ she whispered.